Lanzarote’s light stay on amid blackouts

At 12:33pm on 28th April, Spain, Portugal and parts of France suffered a massive power cut that lasted for several hours. The outage saw thousands of travellers stranded, hundreds of people trapped in lifts and six deaths caused by the failure of respiratory machines and fumes from emergency generators.

The Canaries were not directly affected by the blackout, but the collapse of mainland-based servers meant that there were widespread secondary effects affecting cashpoints and credit card readers. From 8.45 pm on that evening, the islands were left without telecommunications until almost midnight.

In the Canaries there are six electricity systems: one for each island, with Lanzarote and Fuerteventura sharing a grid. While economically more expensive and usually less stable than mainland supplies, in this case the independence of the islands turned out to be an advantage.

At the time of writing, investigations are still continuing into the exact causes of the mainland power cut, which Spain’s energy minister Sara Aagesen has described as “enormously complex”. No precise reason has been determined, but that hasn’t stopped speculation.

At first, it was reported that Portuguese grid operators had blamed the incident on “abrupt changes in temperature”, raising speculation that it may be related to climate change. However, the operator in question later denied ever making such a claim and weather agencies have confirmed that no such temperature changes had occurred.

Fears that the cut was caused by a cyberattack have also been largely discredited, with no evidence supporting such an incident.

At the time of the outage, 54 % of Spain’s power was being produced by solar energy, and the possibility that an influx of solar power may have led to a “voltage spike”, which may have had a similar effect to tripping a fuse, has not been ruled out. But it is far from being proven, either, and claims by sources such as The Daily Telegraph and Fox News that the outage was due to Spain’s Net Zero policies are also speculation.

The Canarian Government, meanwhile, has reminded islanders that power cuts may occur in the future and repeated EU recommendations to keep an “emergency kit” including torches, batteries, clockwork or battery-operated radios, First Aid supplies and toiletries and enough food and water for 72 hours.